UC-eLinks – California Digital Libraryhttps://www.cdlib.org/cdlinfo
The Official CDL BlogFri, 14 Dec 2018 18:07:53 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=5.0.1So, what is Unpaywall anyway?https://www.cdlib.org/cdlinfo/2018/07/24/so-what-is-unpaywall-anyway/
Tue, 24 Jul 2018 18:02:27 +0000https://www.cdlib.org/cdlinfo/?p=22517More...]]>Unpaywall is a service that maintains a database of links to full-text articles from open-access sources all over the world. The content is harvested from legal sources including repositories run by universities, governments, and scholarly societies, as well as open content hosted by publishers themselves. Unpaywall focuses on providing greater access to several types of open content:

Hybrid OA content: Unpaywall captures individual articles which are available OA directly from the publisher, in a journal which is otherwise available only by paid subscription.

Full OA journal content: Unpaywall captures articles which are published in full OA journals and indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals or other sources.

Originally called oaDOI when the associated SFX target was activated in UC-eLinks in May 2017, the service was later renamed ‘Unpaywall’. The criteria for an Unpaywall link to display on a UC-eLinks menu include:

A DOI is sent to UC-eLinks (via OpenURL),

A full-text OA version of the article is present in the Unpaywall dataset,

The Unpaywall target is activated in addition to other OA targets currently activated in UC-eLinks, such as DOAJ (Directory Open Access Journals Free) and BioMed Central Open Access Free, etc.

At last count in mid-2017, UC-eLinks had 42,213 free or open access titles activated. Unpaywall expands access through UC-eLinks to over 18 million OA articles.

Web of Science Integration

Starting in December 2017, Unpaywall content was integrated into the Web of Science interface. The goal is to provide Web of Science users with access to millions of verified peer-reviewed legal versions of Gold and Green OA content.

For Green OA articles, Web of Science will only link to peer-reviewed versions from open repositories, NOT “pre-prints.” Two types of Green OA articles (Accepted Manuscript and Published Version) are identified.

For all OA articles, Web of Science will preference links to the publisher’s Gold version, when available.

According to Clarivate Analytics, the providers of the Web of Science database, “the integration of Unpaywall with the Web of Science will substantially increase discoverability and access to trusted OA content, providing a benefit to researchers and a boost to OA’s ongoing evolution.” More information is available here: http://info.clarivate.com/openaccess.

]]>NEW! UC-eLinks Journal Search pagehttps://www.cdlib.org/cdlinfo/2017/06/30/new-uc-elinks-journal-search-page/
Sat, 01 Jul 2017 00:54:00 +0000http://www.cdlib.org/cdlinfo/?p=20811More...]]>Ex Libris has introduced a new Journal Search page, an upgrade of the A-Z ejournal list page currently in use. This is the first major redesign of the SFX ejournal search page in more than a decade. Each campus can upgrade when they are ready. See details below. You can start using the Journal Search page by simply changing the links from your old A-Z list page to point to your new Journal Search page.

Preview the new journal search page

How do you customize your new journal search page?

Your UC-eLinks liaison(s) have access to upload header images, add links to the header, and upload CSS (to change the look and feel of the page). For the first time, campuses are able to manage this using the SFX administration interface rather than formally requesting the change from CDL. However, if you need assistance, please don’t hesitate to contact us at ucelinks@cdlib.org.

]]>Introducing the UC-eLinks Sidebarhttps://www.cdlib.org/cdlinfo/2017/04/17/introducing-the-uc-elinks-sidebar/
Mon, 17 Apr 2017 21:06:45 +0000http://www.cdlib.org/cdlinfo/?p=20488More...]]>Ex Libris has launched a new option for direct linking in SFX (UC-eLinks): the DirectLink sidebar. The sidebar appears on the right side of the screen while the full text appears on the left side of screen. The DirectLink Sidebar replaces the DirectLink banner, which appeared at the top of articles. After successful testing by CDL staff and campus UC-eLinks administrators, CDL went live with the DirectLink sidebar on April 17, 2017.

The DirectLink sidebar includes many features that are beneficial to the University of California community:

Users will link directly to articles more frequently, bypassing the full UC-eLinks menu, since the DirectLink Sidebar uses the updated HTML5 “iFrame” method; more vendors allow their content to be displayed in the iFrame than the HTML4 “frame” method used by the DirectLink banner.

The sidebar includes a Full UC-eLinks Menu button which opens the complete UC-eLinks menu.

The Help link (that opens the “Report a Problem with UC-eLinks” online form) appears just to the right of the UC-eLinks logo.

The sidebar can be manually collapsed and re-expanded. By default, it is expanded.

In the case where a vendor does not allow their content to be viewed in an iFrame, UC-eLinks will be configured to show the full menu.

The sidebar is W3C AA compatible for accessibility.

Screenshots of the DirectLink Sidebar in action

No ‘Close frame’ (x) Button

Users have commented that the UC-eLinks sidebar does not include a ‘Close frame’ (X) button so users can copy the article URL into a bibliography without the extraneous UC-eLinks coding. Due to the underlying technology of the sidebar, adding this button is not possible.

Work-around

To get rid of the frame entirely, click the Full UC-eLinks Menu button at the bottom of the sidebar. This displays the entire UC-eLinks menu. You can then use the Get It Online From link to display the article’s full text, or use any of the other menu options, without the frame.

The CDL UC-eLinks team would like to thank Tab McDaniel and Michele Mizejewski at UCSF for their assistance with design and usability recommendations.

If you have any questions about the DirectLink Sidebar, contact the CDL UC-eLinks team at ucelinks@cdlib.org.

]]>CDL Job Opening for Discovery and Delivery Systems Librarianhttps://www.cdlib.org/cdlinfo/2016/08/10/cdl-job-opening-for-discovery-and-delivery-systems-librarian/
Wed, 10 Aug 2016 18:49:34 +0000http://www.cdlib.org/cdlinfo/?p=19685More...]]>The Discovery and Delivery Systems Librarian serves as a domain expert in both library and key technical domains, responsible for operating key library services (union catalog, link resolvers) and integrated services such as Interlibrary Loan, while maintaining community connections and information flow related to library systems software, standards and infrastructure. The position demands solid knowledge of core library systems, particularly link resolvers, and academic publishing workflows, as well as demonstrated ability to think strategically about evolving systems in new directions to meet emerging needs. Responsibilities include technical configuration and administration of current product implementations. Another strong component of the position is understanding what the various components of academic library systems are and how they integrate.

Get details: http://www.cdlib.org/services/d2d/d2d_systems_analyst_2016.html

]]>Farewell to Margery Tibbettshttps://www.cdlib.org/cdlinfo/2016/03/29/farewell-to-margery-tibbetts/
Tue, 29 Mar 2016 19:22:09 +0000http://www.cdlib.org/cdlinfo/?p=18750More...]]>After 31 years of service, Margery Tibbetts, long time technical lead for UCe-Links and WorldCat Local, will retire from CDL, effective April 5, 2016. Margery started working in academic libraries her freshman year at Purdue University and continued working there until she graduated in Dec 1978. Current technology at the time included teletype machines and paper pick lists.

Before entering the University of Illinois Urbana- Champaign’s Graduate School of Library and Information Science, Margery worked for the Purdue University Catalog department doing copy cataloging using the early OCLC cataloging interface (that terminal model is now in the Smithsonian Museum of American History!) While at Purdue, she was mentored into the library profession by Mimi Drake (hats off to Mimi and her foresight in talent spotting).

Margery graduated in Dec 1983, receiving the equivalent of 2 degrees, one in traditional library services such as cataloging, reference and bibliographies, and the other in the then ‘emerging’ field of library automation. Margery sent her resume to the ALA placement service, and was recruited to DLA, CDL’s predecessor organization. And thus began her illustrious career at CDL.

A recap of Margery’s career is akin to pulling back a curtain to the dawn of the intersection between libraries and computers. Margery was instrumental in developing core services that have evolved over time, are still in place, heavily used, and reflect a lasting legacy to the digital library community.

Margery was part of all of the generations of Melvyl, from birth to the current 4th generation. For 1st generation Melvyl, she developed programs to prepare MARC records for ingest into the Melvyl database. Similarly, she helped create Melvyl Medline.

Margery was tech lead for Melvyl’s Z39.50 server (2nd generation). In addition to being used by the Melvyl Z39.50 client (MelWeb) the server was used by Z39.50 clients around the globe. The next incarnation for Melvyl was the transition to Aleph Melvyl, when the Abstract and Indexing databases that were part of 2nd generation Melvyl moved to vendor platforms. In 2009, UC moved to Melvyl based on WorldCat Local (Melvyl 4th generation). Margery is advising us and OCLC on our move to WorldCat Discovery (Melvyl 5th generation), which will happen after her retirement.

At the same time she was busily working on all of Melvyl’s incarnations, Margery played an active and important role in developing link resolver technology. She was part of the Elsevier Tulip and IEEE/IEL linking projects – the first forays into linking citations to the full text of articles – which was groundbreaking technology. She developed CDL’s link resolver based on a journal metadata database and knowledge of how to construct links to the full text of articles at the publisher site. This was a brand new concept at the time and became an active part of early e-journal licensing activity. Margery worked on UC-eLinks (SFX) from version 1.2 to version 4.8 and she worked with the UC-eLinks Admin liaison team so campuses could maintain their locally licensed resources in UC-eLinks.

The third leg of Margery’s career involves her deep involvement in electronic resource management at UC, from the first meeting at UCI in 2004 to Verde (consortia solution) to today’s Serial Solution 360 Resource Manager (CDL solution).

While we at CDL have greatly appreciated and respected Margery’s many technical accomplishments, we would like to acknowledge her other contributions to CDL. Margery has participated in all of our potlucks, dessert contests, Halloween parties, showers, retirements and every social occasion. She continually delights us with homemade pies, cakes, and homemade ice cream. Retired colleagues received homemade quilts; and many CDL staff babies received homemade gifts, too.

Margery will relocate back to the Midwest by year’s end, where she has plans for an active retirement. She’s purchased an 8 harness floor loom for weaving, and is already considering volunteer opportunities. She’ll continue knitting, beading, jewelry making and other crafts, and astonishing us with her creativity and skill.

We recognize Margery’s deep and abiding accomplishments to the University of California community and to the larger library community, and will miss her greatly.

]]>CDL Job Opening for Discovery and Delivery Systems Analysthttps://www.cdlib.org/cdlinfo/2016/02/29/cdl-job-opening-for-discovery-and-delivery-systems-analyst/
Mon, 29 Feb 2016 23:17:54 +0000http://www.cdlib.org/cdlinfo/?p=18624More...]]>Reporting to the Discovery & Delivery Technical Team Manager, the Discovery and Delivery Systems Analyst serves as a domain expert in both library and key technical domains, maintaining community connections and information flow related to library systems software, standards and infrastructure. The position demands solid knowledge of core library systems and academic publishing workflows, as well as demonstrated ability to think strategically about evolving systems in new directions to meet emerging needs. Responsibilities include administration of current product implementations, but the primary emphasis is on the big picture: understanding what the various components of academic library systems are and how they integrate rather than on any specific software implementation. Get details about this position: http://www.cdlib.org/services/d2d/d2d_systems_analyst_2016.html

]]>New mobile version of UC-eLinkshttps://www.cdlib.org/cdlinfo/2016/01/12/new-mobile-version-of-uc-elinks/
Tue, 12 Jan 2016 19:45:52 +0000http://www.cdlib.org/cdlinfo/?p=18505More...]]>As of January 12, 2016, you will see a mobile-optimized version of UC-eLinks when you are on most mobile devices. Thank you to the campus UC-eLinks Liaisons and the the UC-eLinks Operations team for assisting with testing.

Mobile versions are available for these UC-eLinks interfaces:

UC-eLinks full menu window

UC-eLinks banner (i.e., direct linking in a frame where you bypass the full menu window)

A-Z ejournal lists

At this time, a mobile version of the Citation Linker form is not available.

See the screenshots below comparing the non-mobile (desktop) version of UC-eLinks to the mobile version, and we’ve described the major differences. Desktop is shown on the left, and mobile is on the right.

UC-eLinks menu

The mobile version of the UC-eLinks menu (see below at the right) includes icons and truncates the text preceding any links.

Screenshots of UC-eLinks full menu (left) compared with the mobile version (right).

UC-eLinks Direct Linking

When in a frame, the mobile UC-eLinks menu (at the right) loses its branding and the “Report a Problem” link is not displayed. Notice in the example below at the right, the vendor content (IEEE.org) is not optimized for mobile, for example, a user has to scroll to see the whole page.

Screenshot of UC-eLinks direct-linking banner in a frame (left) compared with the mobile version (right).

UC-eLinks A-Z List

The mobile version contains the fields from the “Advanced Search” tab and does not contain campus specific branding. The “Full AZ list” link brings up the desktop version of the A-Z list on the mobile device.

Find full text on the web or in your university library. Select the title of the paper on the page you’re reading, and click the Scholar button to find it.

Transfer your query from web search to Scholar. Press the Scholar button to see top three results; click “full screen” in the lower left of the popup to see them all.

For example, in Firefox, highlight an article title and click the Google Scholar button on your toolbar. A box pops up with the located article. You can click the linked article title to go directly to the full text (if available). You can also click the UC-eLinks button which will link to the full text of the article, if available, or display links to check for the journal in your campus catalog or to request the article via UC-eLinks.

Format references in widely used citation styles. Press the quote button in the popup to see a formatted reference and copy it into the paper you’re writing.

Additional Advice

Library links work best when you’re on campus. To configure them for off-campus use, visit Google Scholar Settings at https://scholar.google.com/scholar_settings (you may need to login with your library password or to set up your browser to use a library proxy; please visit your library’s website or ask a local librarian for assistance).

Click the gear icon at the bottom of the popup to configure Google Scholar Settings.

]]>UC-eLinks user interface simplified: Go button is going, going, gonehttps://www.cdlib.org/cdlinfo/2015/06/24/uc-elinks-user-interface-simplified-go-button-is-going-going-gone/
Wed, 24 Jun 2015 19:23:48 +0000http://www.cdlib.org/cdlinfo/?p=17708More...]]>CDL made a modification to the UC-eLinks menu window and the direct linking banner that affects the user interface but does not change any functionality. Under the hood, we switched the SFX template that controls the user interface from a highly customized “advanced” template to the mainstream “simplified” template. Removing the “Go” button and changing the wording of one of the links brings UC-eLinks into full compliance with accessibility standards, and by moving to the simplified template, UC-eLinks will be easier to maintain. Moving forward, we can rely on ExLibris to make regular accessibility updates to the SFX simplified template.

Our intention was to match the look of the current window as closely as possible in the new simplified template. We are not revisiting any other design changes with UC-eLinks at this time. This is the second step in reducing the total cost of ownership for UC-eLinks. The first step was moving to cloud hosting. The UC-eLinks Operations Team and the UC-eLinks Liaisons have tested the new template.

What exactly has changed?

In the UC-eLinks direct linking banner:

UC-eLinks logo is on a white background instead of a gold background.

Citation has more information, including author names, and is formatted differently.

Order of links in upper right has changed: “Report a Problem” is listed first — a constraint of the new template.

“Remove frame” has changed to “Close the UC-eLinks frame” to meet accessibility standards, i.e., explicitly states which frame is being closed.

In the UC-eLinks menu window:

Same as the first 2 items above, and

“CDL Privacy Policy” link has moved from the footer to “Get Help” since the simplified template lacks a custom footer.

“Go” button is gone – this brings the UC-eLinks menu window into compliance with the accessibility recommendation against placing redundant links in close proximity.

Screenshot: new UC-elinks direct linking banner

Screenshot: old UC-eLinks direct linking banner

Screenshot: new UC-elinks window

Screenshot: old UC-eLinks window

What’s not changing?

Citation Linker forms, the UC-eLinks A-Z lists, and other forms such as the Report a Problem form, are not affected.

What do you need to do?

If you maintain instructional materials for UC-eLinks, decide if you need to update them. No functionality has changed. CDL maintains the UC-eLinks User Guide and you may wish to link to this document rather than updating your own materials.

]]>UC-eLinks moved successfully to the Ex Libris Cloudhttps://www.cdlib.org/cdlinfo/2013/06/20/uc-elinks-moved-successfully-to-the-ex-libris-cloud/
Thu, 20 Jun 2013 18:01:31 +0000http://www.cdlib.org/cdlinfo/?p=13836More...]]>Early in the morning on Thursday June 20, UC-eLinks went live on the Ex Libris Cloud. This means CDL is no longer hosting the SFX software that runs UC-eLinks. UC Davis also successfully moved its separate SFX instance onto the cloud at Ex Libris at the same time as CDL made the migration. CDL will continue to manage UC-eLinks on behalf of University of California libraries. SFX software and knowledge base updates will continue to occur on a regular, weekly basis. There will be no perceived changes for the campuses or for end users.

We are pleased to report the data migration process and testing took less than three months to complete, and started and finished on schedule. The implementation was lead by UC-eLinks technical lead, Margery Tibbetts at CDL, and implementation manager, Matt Baker at Ex Libris. CDL’s Debra Bartling played a key role as a technical advisor.

Thanks also to Karl Kocher, Dale Snapp, and James Niffenegger who lead the UC Davis migration.

The CDL UC-eLinks team would like to thank the UC-eLinks administrators, Users Council, HOPS, and all the people who helped coordinate testing on the campuses — and special thanks to the people who completed the testing.